Photonic Products laser blog

There is some new cutting edge treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome, without the surgery.

“There’s no pain at all involved,” said Debbie Vallone who has chosen a lighter treatment for her carpal tunnel pain.

“What we’re doing is using light rays here,” said laser therapist Dwayne Claud.

Vallone can see the light, but she can’t feel it. This is very different from the pain she’s dealt with from carpal tunnel syndrome. “You feel like your hands are going to sleep. You get the numbness in your fingers,” Vallone said.

Vallone wanted to give a new treatment a try because her pain is still manageable.

While medical lasers are hot so they can cut and burn, these low- level lasers are also known as cold lasers.

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Researchers in Japan have shown that a train of femtosecond laser pulses can cause heart muscle cells to contract and synchronize to the laser exposure. This optical pacemaker effect could provide crucial insights into abnormal heart rhythms and be combined with anti-fibrillation drugs to understand these effects at the cellular level. (Optics Express 16 8604)

“Calcium regulates the contraction of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells),” Nicholas Smith from Osaka University told optics.org. “We knew that if we could artificially perturb the calcium levels in the cell, we could control the beating and change its frequency. We used periodic femtosecond laser irradiation to synchronize the cell beat frequency and effectively create a laser pacemaker for the cells.”

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Backed by industry and the European Commission, the ‘Brighter’ project is delivering powerful 635 and 650 nm laser diodes for medical applications as the first of its many goals.

“A laser-guided silver bullet to certain forms of cancer,” is how Eric Larkins describes photodynamic therapy – the treatment in which cancer drugs are activated by light. Despite this powerful description, laser-activated photodynamic therapy (PDT) systems are limited by commercially available diode laser technologies, most of which were developed for CD players and telecom applications.

“The problem that doctors have is actually getting the wavelength and the powers that they need, as power is directly related to dosage,” explained Larkins, the spokesperson for a multimillion euro research project called Brighter.

Now, Brighter is promising to boost the effectiveness of PDT, with high-power 635 and 650 nm diodes primed for manufacture.

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Doctors specialising in cosmetic treatments are warning of a growing problem of “cowboy clinics” using lasers without proper training or controls and endangering patients.

The British Association of Cosmetic Doctors (BACD) is demanding tighter regulation of the beauty industry to protect the public. But the Department of Health has ignored the warnings and announced plans to deregulate the use of lasers in cosmetic treatment.

The government proposals, which are out for consultation until June, mean high street beauty clinics offering laser treatment will no longer have to register with the Healthcare Commission, the health inspectorate, and will not be subject to regular inspection.

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Perfect vision in minutes. See better than 20/20 today. Throw away your glasses forever. You won’t believe your eyes.

The LASIK ads are so tempting. How can one resist those attractive women and men, nerds no more, liberated from the yoke of eyewear, at long last taking control of their lives, experiencing new-found happiness in karate and kayaking. It’s enough to make folks without eyeglasses jealous, left wondering how they too can get in on some of this good stuff.

But that’s because the ads fail to mention the side effects that hundreds of thousands of people who have undergone LASIK laser eye surgery experience each day, such as poor night vision, dry eyes and incessant glare problems.

Last week a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on LASIK heard testimony from some of these patients not so happy with their procedure. The panel recommended that the FDA needs to better inform the public about the risks of the laser surgery.

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ANYONE who has ever shared a bed with a snorer knows the torture of sleepless nights and the arguments that can follow. Now surgeons hope a revolutionary laser technique could solve the problem for many chronic snorers in Scotland. A private clinic in London is to start offering the surgery to patients in Edinburgh.

It is thought that Scotland’s obesity problems make it a prime target for the treatment, with much snoring caused by people being overweight. But experts warned that surgery should be a last resort and that it was not always successful. The news came during National Stop Snoring Week.

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Despite domestic concerns like inflation and a looming home lending crisis, Americans continue to spend money on plastic surgery. According to the latest procedural statistics report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), almost 12 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures were performed in 2007, a 7% increase from 2006 and a 59% increase from 2000.

Laser hair removal procedures grew 2%, from 887,000 in 2006 to 906,000 in 2007. Laser skin resurfacing saw a 32% jump in the number of procedures performed, from 263,000 in 2006 to 347,000 in 2007.

“The report tells me Americans are devoted to looking and feeling their best,” said Richard A. D’Amico, MD, ASPS president. “High demand continues for less invasive and relatively less expensive procedures, but there were also promising rebounds in some surgical procedures.”

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A new approach to medical imaging using an instrument that can reveal details of tumours and tissues with a precision 1,000 times sharper than existing techniques has been developed by American scientists.

Raman spectroscopy can picture internal anatomical features within an accuracy of nearly a billionth of a millimetre and has already been used to image both normal tissues and tumours in mice. It could be particularly useful in cancer surgery, allowing doctors to detect and remove tumour particles that are too small to be picked up and excised using existing techniques.

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The world’s top laser experts will gather in Kissimmee, FL, to share innovations in lasers and emerging technologies at the 28th Annual Scientific Conference of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery (ASLMS).

LASER 2008 will be held on April 2-6, 2008, at the Gaylord Palms(TM) Resort and Convention Center.

Headlining the scientific program are acknowledged leaders in the field who will unveil the latest research developments and clinical studies in laser medicine, as well as present promising devices poised to enhance disease detection and management.

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Government plans to drop the regulation of lasers used by beauty salons for cosmetic treatments, such as the removal of wrinkles, hair and tattoos, would pose a serious risk to patients’ health, doctors said yesterday.

Leading cosmetic surgeons said that the proposals, set out by the Department of Health, would allow anyone without qualifications to start using lasers and other light techniques.

Hundreds of salons in England use lasers for treating lines and wrinkles, removing hair and eliminating tattoos and birthmarks.

Another technique, intense pulsed light (IPL), is used for removing hair from larger areas such as the back or the legs.

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